


A Pomegranate's Worth

by zeldadestry



Category: Firefly
Genre: Community: 100_women, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-20
Updated: 2006-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-10 13:59:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River wants to dance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pomegranate's Worth

**Author's Note:**

> prompt 018, 'Truth', for 100_women fanfic challenge  
> fang zong feng kuang de jie = 'a knot of self-indulgent lunacy' from Firefly-Serenity Chinese Pinyinary

Simon says he's a bad dancer, but it's not true. It's just what he says when she tries to get him to dance with her. River, I can't, I'll step on your toes and break them if I try.

Right. No, not right. Simon doesn't want to dance because he doesn't like his thoughts when he's that close to her, when she lets him lead and his touch orchestrates her sways and bends.

He wanted to find fresh pomegranates for Kaylee's birthday, but all they passed on their travels were bottles of grenadine. No real pomegranate juice, just the chemical approximation mixed with sugar and water. No, not even real sugar, it's too rare. Corn syrup. It's a fake drink, she thinks. It's a fake drink and no good will come of it.

She is bored. That happens sometimes, now. Before her brain was so clouded, occluded, and she spent so much time lost inside it. She thinks she could use the memory of that, use it to help communicate with those whose brains are scrambled like hers were, but not because of the Alliance, not because of secret evil research, but simply because they were born that way, or grew too old and lost each memory almost as soon as they had made it. Yes, now her brain is hers again and she can use it as she likes. It's hers, not a tool of the military's.

Yes, her brain is hers again, but she still has to share it. That's alright, though, she's shared it her whole life. She shares it with everyone she comes near, and perhaps if it wasn't so good at remembering, once people drifted away their thoughts and feelings would be exorcised from her. But it's never worked that way. She can remember every word she ever read, every word ever said to her, every thought and feeling of anyone who has ever stepped into her path.

Simon is working, making notes as he looks at a sample of Zoe's blood on a slide. She caught a respiratory infection recently and it's lingering. He wants to find a way to eradicate it, rather than simply waiting it out while it taxes Zoe's immune strength. He is working, but he is also sad about his gift for Kaylee. He is sad that he couldn't find the real thing.

'It's the thought that counts,' she says, but she's mocking him, and he knows it.

'This from the girl who pouted for days when her brother didn't get her the slippers she wanted for her sixth birthday.'

'You got them for me. You just didn't give them to me right away.'

'It was too much fun watching you stomp around the house and throw tantrums whenever you saw me heading your way.'

'I wish I still had them.'

'We could probably find you another pair. The old ones wouldn't fit you now.'

'I know that.' They were pink slippers with thick pink ribbons to lace around your ankle and up your calf. She loved them because they were like the shoes ballerinas wore when they were ready to go on pointe.

She wants to work, like he is working, so he gives her a clipboard and paper and a pen and she sits down beside him and she writes him a poem a dossier an exploration of the pomegranate.

A symbol and part of ritual in several different religions.

The juice is red and when we bleed so easily we always say blood when we see wet and red together.

Crack the fruit open and reveal the many many fleshy seeds. This is why we see it as a symbol of fertility. Like the wombs of animals that have multiple births, many many little kernels of potential life.

Musn't forget Persephone. Eat this fruit this fruit so succulent that it can trap you down in the underworld for all time. Persephone's mother missed her so. Demeter. Our mother may miss us, but you won't talk to me about it, will you? Sometimes I wish I could still feel her as I did when she was near. She did love us, I remember. Sometimes when she would hold me, I would feel it. Not always, but sometimes. I always know you love me, Simon. Almost always. It's so strong in you, I feel it even when I'm not looking for it. Like now. You're glad I'm here. You're glad I'm beside you. You think that if I ever disappeared again, you would wish to die.

The pomegranate was one of nine plants offered to Durga. It was offered to Buddha and it was his most favorite gift. In turn, he gave it to a demon, Hariti, and she was so delighted with it that she stopped eating children. It was the apple in Eden, the reason for Eve's fall. It is a sign, a marker, you will find it in the Promised Land. There are six hundred and thirteen commandments in the Torah and it was once said that there were that many seeds in each pomegranate. In the Koran, the gardens of paradise have pomegranates. Traditionally, one must eat every single seed, because no one knows which one it is that came from paradise. In the Unicorn Tapestries, circa 1500, the unicorn, symbol of Christ, bleeds. His blood is not our blood. It is pomegranate seeds.

She reads over what she has written, tears the paper in two and puts one piece in her pocket. The next time Simon looks her way, it's not a long wait, she shows him the last paragraph.

He reads quickly, small smile gracing his face. 'Who's Durga?'

'Hindu goddess of retribution and justice. She has ten arms.'

'Where'd you learn all this?'

'The library at the Academy. It had all sorts of material that's not available on the Cortex.'

'I remember that from the brochure. It was part of the reason you wanted to attend.'

'Yes.'

'You learned this from books?'

'Yes. Stories from Earth That Was.'

'What fang zong feng kuang de jie, isn't it? We live much more rationally, now.'

Sometimes she speaks to him directly, from her brain to his. He asks her not to do it and so she rarely does. She does it now, though. Some things are too important to be spoken aloud. _But Simon, you prayed to find me, didn't you? You would have offered pomegranates to every deity desperate men have invented if you thought it might help._

I suppose that's true. I did anything to find you. Everything. You know that.

I know.

She tears up the paper in her hands, tears up the paper in her pocket, tears everything into little tiny shreds, throws it up into the air above them and watches it float down over their heads. 'Confetti,' she says, solemn and sullen, before racing away and leaving him to clean up the mess, like dregs from a party that started too late and ended too early. A party is no party if there is not dancing. She wishes he understood.


End file.
